


God's Mysterious Ways

by Sivullinen



Category: Hikaru no Go (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-18
Updated: 2008-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sivullinen/pseuds/Sivullinen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his death, there are still some adventures for Touya Kouyo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God's Mysterious Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [trensaddiction](http://trensaddiction.livejournal.com/) at [fifthmus](http://community.livejournal.com/fifthmus/)! I had fun writing something different from my usual type. And a huge thank you to my betas! Originally posted [here](http://community.livejournal.com/fifthmus/5205.html).

Everything was white.

Touya Kouyo considered this to be a little peculiar, but before he had time to get bored, there was someone else.

“Oh,” said the young man, with recognition in his eyes, though Kouyo was quite certain they had never met before – he would have remembered a man with violet hair dressed in Heian era clothes, surely.

“Are you dreaming?” said the man, cautiously.

“I’m dead,” said Kouyo matter-of-factly. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Like you know when you are hungry and tired, though now there was no urge similar to eating or sleeping, no urge to do something about it.

“I’m sorry,” said the strange man compassionately. “I hope it won’t be too hard on your wife and Akira-san!”

“How do you know--?” Kouyo started in astonishment. Maybe he had been wrong, and this was not just a man, after all?

“Oh, please forgive me! I’m Sai,” the man – _Sai_ – said, and Kouyo’s heart leapt; finally he met the man he had been searching for so long! Though none of this made much sense, it was easier to accept than when he had been alive.

“Well, in that case, I must thank you for the game,” he said and bowed. “I’m very pleased to finally meet you. But, forgive me for asking… why were you so reclusive when you were in the world?”

Now Sai’s eyes filled with sadness. “At your time, I wasn’t there in body, but just as a ghost haunting Shindou Hikaru. Only he could see me. And…”

He gazed to nothingness for a few moments, which Kouyo used for trying to wrap his mind around the fact that ghosts existed and could enter the living world. Well, that certainly explained how Sai looked so young but had still been such a solid player. “Then I had to leave Hikaru, soon after we had played our game… I do not regret it, for I had already accomplished what I was there for. Or not what I _thought_ I was there for, but what was God’s purpose for me.” He sighed. “I still wish I had gotten a chance to say a proper good-bye to Hikaru. Once, I think I got to his dream, but I don’t know if he’ll remember that.”

“He is doing well,” Kouyo said. “But, what was God’s purpose for you then?”

Sai examined him. “He was not the first person I haunted, Torajirou, I mean Shuusaku, was. And it was… because my life had ended prematurely I wanted to be play more go! Torajirou, he let me play. I never let him play, and I regret that. But Hikaru…” Sai’s eyes softened, “he wanted to play for himself! I didn’t like it, but I think that’s what God wanted. And in the end, I was very proud of him.”

After a ponderous silence, Kouyo spoke. “Those facts certainly explain many things, but what you did was unforgivable. You shouldn’t have taken control of someone else’s life in that way.”

Sai hesitated for a moment. “You are going back as a ghost, too.”

“Me? I would never take away someone else’s go for the sake of my own selfishness! I lived a good, long life and played all the go I was meant to play. The only regret I had was not having played you more, and that’s not something I could accomplish by going back to the world, now.”

Sai shook his head. “Regardless, you are meant to go back. Don’t ask how I know that, I do.”

“6-17!”

“What?”

“You are the only opponent I wish to play, so let’s play,” Kouyo said. “I will not go back.”

Sai opened his mouth and closed it again. “I’m sorry, I can’t. It would be unfair to distract you from your path just for the sake of my own pleasure.”

Kouyo huffed.

“Maybe you will go back for some another reason?” Sai suggested carefully.

Kouyo frowned. “I have no desire to, so leave it be.”

“We cannot fight the fates God has given us,” Sai said softly. “Was there anything you wished to do before dying? Or were you happy to leave the world?”

“I was an old man. Of course you always want to know how your grandchildren will look like, who the next new professional players will be, how your students will do on their career, but...”

But that’s all Sai could hear, because at that moment Kouyo felt like he was being pulled, and everything went from white to black.

*

“You!” shouted someone.

Kouyo looked around bewildered. He was in a relatively nice living room.

In the company of Kuwabara Honinbou, clutching his chest.

“Aren’t you dead, since, what, ten years?” Kuwabara yelled in clear bewilderment. “You almost gave me a heart attack, you bastard!”

“Then what are _you_ still doing alive?” Kouyo asked stiffly, but instead of waiting for an answer sat down to explain the situation to Kuwabara, who took to himself to cackle crazily at all the wrong parts: “Oh so that’s Shindou’s secret! I wonder how much Ogata would pay me for that information!”

And, when Kouyo reached the end, “But why are you haunting me?”

Kouyo shrugged. “I will figure it out. Perhaps it has something to do with one of my students.”

Kuwabara rubbed his chin. “Ogata? He is doing well, though don’t tell him I said that,” Kuwabara laughed wheezily. “The young whelp sure has a bad attitude towards his elders! And Akira-san is, considering how much time he spends on being young and in love, advancing surprisingly steadily, I suppose, and…”

“Akira is in love?” Kouyo asked and leaned forwards, interested.

“But surely you aren’t here to interfere with his life-style choices!” Kuwabara said way too cheerfully and clapped Kouyo on the shoulder in a very suspicious way. However, Kouyo let the matter drop – for now. Surely he would find out sooner or later what his son had been doing for the ten years he had been gone.

Kuwabara furrowed his brow. “Ashiwara-san? He was your student too, right?”

“Yes,” Kouyo admitted.

“Well, he is playing for Kisei in two weeks. Frankly, I don’t think there’s much of a chance for him to win it, and he wouldn’t even be challenging if Shindou weren’t a fool.”

Kouyo stood up. “We’re going to go meet him, then.”

Suddenly Kuwabara started couching. “Touya, I possibly couldn’t, with my frail bones! I’m an old man already…”

Kouyo walked determinedly towards the door, until he discovered the rules of haunting someone: he couldn’t go farther than roughly five meters from Kuwabara.

But Kouyo pushed against the invisible barrier, and to the astonishment of both of them, Kuwabara slid an inch on the floor he was sitting on.

“Well?” Kouyo asked. “Think of it this way, you’ll be rid of me sooner.”

Kuwabara grumbled something which Kouyo decided to ignore, but got up and called his driver.

*

Just as Kuwabara’s car stopped outside the Go Institute, Shindou-san run out of the Go Institute with a yelling Akira on his heels.

“Akira!” Kouyo shouted and started after him, but Kuwabara was taking his time getting out of the car and Kouyo was left staring after the boys –_men_ – as they disappeared behind the corner.

“They have grown, eh?”Kuwabara muttered next to him.

“Hmm,” was Kouyo’s only response.

As they walked across the hall, Kouyo looked around, noticing smaller or larger changes everywhere. Young children stopped to bow to Kuwabara. Some things never change.

“Good afternoon, Kuwabara-sensei,” some of them muttered.

“Not Honinbou anymore, then, eh?” Kouyo said, pretty certain his smirk was not visible.

The number of unknown people was over-whelming to Kouyo, and added to that the fact that he found himself staring at all the new technology, Kuwabara was the one who spotted Ashiwara first.

“Hey boy!” Kuwabara barked. Ashiwara started and bowed to him.

“Good afternoon, Kuwabara-sensei, how are you today?” he asked with a big smile on his face, but then again, Kouyo had never seen him greet anyone less than cheerfully.

“Better than you, by the looks of it,” Kuwabara remarked, and Kouyo couldn’t but agree. Ashiwara was doing his best, but couldn’t hide how tired he looked.

“I will tutor you for your title tournament,” Kuwabara continued and, in Kouyo’s opinion, did his best to look like a mad scientist who just got his hands on a next pack of puppies, ready to be dissected.

Ashiwara’s impression of a gold-fish could compete with that acting, though.

“I…” he stammered, “I would be honored, sensei,” he said and bowed again, looking slightly discomforted.

“Good. And the first lesson is, “Kuwabara said and poked Ashiwara on the stomach with his walking stick, “that you never agree to do something if you don’t want to. Why, that you accepted my teaching request so easily is proof enough that you need it! Can you imagine Ogata, Shindou, Touya, Isumi, doing that? No! That’s why they have titles! Trust yourself! Trust your skills!”

Kuwabara finished in a wheezing cough. Ashiwara took him by the arm and started leading him towards the seats, but Kuwabara shook his head. “No… take me to the gobans.”

*

Kuwabara glared surreptitiously at Kouyo. “You want me to play?” Kouyo asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Kuwabara said.

“Are you feeling quite alright, Kuwabara-sensei?” Ashiwara asked worriedly and fiddled with his stones. “We don’t have to play if you want to go lie down…”

Kouyo pointed hastily at a star point and Kuwabara placed the stone.

Kouyo tried to concentrate on the flow of the game, but found himself distracted. Ashiwara’s go had naturally developed during the time that had passed, but Kouyo’s attention was drawn to the way Kuwabara placed his stones.

“You… don’t play much go these days, do you?” he asked, hardly believing the conclusion he had reached. Something flashed in Kuwabara’s mind but he suppressed the thought too quickly for Kouyo to make any sense of it.

But he did sense Kuwabara’s feelings at the question.

“Fine,” Kouyo said and crossed his arms. “You continue this game from this.”

_The student is yours_, Kuwabara sneered furiously.

“I’m dead, I can’t have students,” Kouyo said.

Ashiwara looked up at Kuwabara. “Sensei? If you need to rest, we can stop now, I already learned a lot, such as… this keima here…”

Kuwabara picked a stone and placed it next to where Kouyo would have. “You should not give up so easily,” he said almost lazily, but for some reason Kouyo sensed also nervousness in him. It vanished before they reached the endgame, though.

Ashiwara lost by three moku, but when he was eagerly pointing out his mistakes Kouyo didn’t listen to him.

“And what, exactly, was that move? Even an Insei would have recognized that pattern and known the answer to the tsumego!”

“When is the next day you have no appointments?” Kuwabara interrupted them both. “You will come to my apartment then.” Kuwabara pushed himself up, stumbled, let Ashiwara help himself up and started walking away.

Ashiwara looked long after Kuwabara, rubbed the back of his head, and then knelt down to hastily gather the stones back to gokes.

Kouyo took a last look at the goban, got up to hurry after Kuwabara, and everything went black.

And then white.

He found himself staring at Sai’s smiling face.

“So, how did it go?” Sai asked happily.

“I… I can’t be back yet! I didn’t finish doing what I was there to do! I didn’t get to teach Ashiwara anything, and I didn’t even find out about Akira, and…” Kouyo looked sternly at Sai. “Please send me back.”

Sai held his hand up. “It wasn’t me who decided you should go, or who summoned you back. You might not have finished what you thought you were there to do, but you have finished what God wanted you to do, Touya-san.”

Sai looked both sad and happy saying that. And when Kouyo reflected on his feelings, he realized that was how he felt too.

“So,” Sai asked, “may I ask for a game now?”

And their surroundings changed, as Kouyo nodded in agreement.


End file.
